PEORIA, Ill. – San Diego’s priestly Padres hatch a chicken, while an oversized, neon green muppet cheers on Philadelphia’s Phillies.

Soon, Bradley University will decide whether it can add a face to its Braves nickname without using American Indian imagery that might cross the NCAA’s bid to weed “hostile” and “abusive” mascots out of college sports.

The Peoria school was flooded with more than 100 suggestions after launching a grassroots campaign Tuesday seeking ideas for a new mascot that would replace an unpopular bobcat retired in 2000 after briefly replacing an American Indian caricature dropped about a decade earlier.

Ideas will be accepted at [email protected] through Oct. 15, when a 10 member committee will decide whether Bradley should restore a mascot and, if so, narrow the field of candidates.

“We want this to be constituency driven,” said Mitch Griffin, a Bradley marketing professor and chairman of the committee that also includes basketball coach Jim Les.

The committee says suggestions should play off the “Bradley’s Braves” nickname and should be “visually aggressive but not frightening.” If the campaign yields a mascot, it could debut in 2007-08 school year, Griffin said.

Bradley was among 18 schools that came under fire last year over nicknames or mascots the NCAA deemed offensive to American Indians.

The school was moved off the NCAA’s list of colleges with banned nicknames in April after winning an appeal that argued its American Indian mascot was dropped over a decade ago, leaving only the generic nickname “Braves.”

The NCAA placed Bradley on a watch list, saying it will monitor the school for five years “to assure that circumstances don’t change.”